Hirasawa S, Kitahara Y, Okamatsu Y, Fujii T, Nakayama A, Ueno S, Ijichi C, Futaki F, Nakata K, Taki M. Facile and Efficient Chemoenzymatic Semisynthesis of Fc-Fusion Compounds for Half-Life Extension of Pharmaceutical Components.
Bioconjug Chem 2019;
30:2323-2331. [PMID:
31038930 DOI:
10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.9b00235]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
The formation of Fc-fusions, in which biologically active molecules and the Fc fragment of antibodies are linked to each other, is one of the most efficient and successful half-life extension technologies to be developed and applied to peptide and protein pharmaceuticals thus far. Fc-fusion compounds are generally produced by recombinant methods. However, these cannot be applied to artificial middle molecules, such as peptides with non-natural amino acids, unnatural cyclic peptides, or pharmaceutical oligonucleotides. Here, we developed a simple, efficient, semisynthetic method for Fc-fusion production involving our previously developed enzymatic N-terminal extension reaction (i.e., NEXT-A reaction) and strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition, achieving quantitative conversion and high selectivity for the N-terminus of the Fc protein. An Fc-fusion compound prepared by this method showed comparable biological activity to that of the original peptide and a long-circulating plasma half-life. Thus, the proposed method is potentially applicable for the conjugation of a wide range of pharmaceutical components.
Collapse